Survivors of the Hell on Earth
by MorbidMan
Summary: Ten people survive the demons attacking Earth. Among them are an almost insane man, a bipolar woman, and a kid who knows how to shoot. Chapter Two now revised.
1. Enter Tony Empton

**1: Enter Tony Empton**

**Doom-**1. A judgment; sentence 2. Fate 3. Ruin or death

**Dooms Day-**the time of God's final judgment of all people

The day that would take eternities to end for those who would be lucky enoughor unlucky enough depending on your point of viewto survive it began with a spout of violence. Hundreds were dead before the sun even breached the horizon. Thousands shortly after.

A young man named Tony Empton saw the very beginning of everything. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes as he pulled his blinds up. There was a roaring fire next door. "Whoa!" Tony gasped, only half awake. He could hear the distant banshee screams of a fire truck's sirens as it sped like a bat out of Hell to the inferno that was his neighbor's house. The sun was not yet peaking over the edge of the horizon.

Sandy, the pudgy thirteen year old daughter of the renter's of the flaming house and Tony's little sister's friend, was standing outside, howling fear, frustration, and whatever other emotion was running through her body out into the early morning air. Tony looked on sympathetically. There wasn't much else he could do. The firemen were on their way and a couple of people were running out to comfort her.

She was the only one to have emerged from the flames. Tony didn't even begin to doubt that situation was about to change. The three-story house was all but completely engulfed in the fire. He stared on with a calmness that only the half-conscious can experience.A sinking feeling formulated in the pit of his stomach as the reality of the situation began to settle into his mind. "Oh, Jesus fucking Christ," he croaked and turned away from his window. He walked through his nice and orderly bedroom and out into the hall. He traced his hand across the wallpaper which displayed vertical vines with interchanging red and white flowers as he walked down the hall.

The sirens were just outside and he could hear the spray of water. Tony stomped down the blue carpeted stairs leading to the first floor of his house, which he shared with his parents, sister, and brother, paying a monthly rent to his parents so as not to be a freeloader. He could hear the muffled sound of moving bedsprings which could only mean that the rest of the household was waking up.

Tony trudged through the living room and dining room to the front door facing the street. He was in blue boxers and a white T-shirt. Not the warmest thing to wear when going outside, but he needed to be out there as soon as possible. He didn't understand why he wanted to be out there so badly, but he needed to see what was going on without it being filtered by glass.  
So he stepped out into the cold air and looked onward at the mayhem. Flames licking the air as they began to die off, their murderer being the fire hose. Sandy was screaming still, screaming for someone to save her parents from the fire. Firemen were inside doing her bidding. Tony could see their outlines in the windows against the yellows, reds, and oranges of the fire as they searched.

With the firemen tearing the house apart in search of the parents it looked good that they would find them, alive or dead. Considering the fire hadn't been raging for an extreme amount of time, chances were that they would be alive. Everything was looking bright.

It all went straight to Hell when the firemen began to scream. Perhaps it would be more sufficient to say that Hell went straight to it instead of the other way around.

A second floor window shattered and the screaming, fireproofed body of a fireman tumbled out and hit the lawn headfirst. His screaming stopped. Tony's mind began to race.

The fire was suddenly rejuvenated and raged against the water, throwing themselves higher into the air than they had a right to be. Another house caught fire and its residents, safe outside, began to shout their disapproval. The fire hose began to fight that fire instead, to keep the flames from spreading. It failed again and the entire house was soon consumed.

Possibly the only surviving fireman to enter the house came running out of the door, screaming like it was the end of the world. Then a small, brown creature leapt out on top of his back, forcing him to the ground. One of its two heads tore the back of the fireman's head apart while the other looked at the onlookers with a strange grin on its face. It looked like it had been rotting in flames for an eternity, its skin crinkled like the skin of a cooked turkey. Its eyestwo on each headglowed a fierce orange.  
Aside from seven or eight individuals, no one moved as its left head devoured what the dead man's skull contained ardently. Then it lunged forth and tackled Sandy in a single motion that appeared faster than lightening. Her dying screams couldn't be heard above everyone else's as they ran. Tony slammed the door shut and found he was screaming himself. So was his teenage little brother who had snuck up behind him.

"What the fuck was that?" Jay shrieked in that high voice he always used when in pain, angry, or scared.

"I don't know!" Tony yelled back. They were both staring at the door. Fast movement and voices could be heard upstairs.

"No, seriously," Jay continued shrieking. "What… the… fuck… was that?" "Jay?" their mother called down the stairs, worried. Tony wondered what the fuck they could possibly say to explain the situation to her.

"Tony?"

"Get dressed!" Tony shouted in reply. "Wake everyone up and get ready!"

"What? Why?" Their mother began to descend the stairs rapidly, trying to see what all the fuss was about.

"Just fucking do it!" Jay shrieked at her before she appeared near the bottom. "Fucking do it!" Hesitation. Their mother ascended the stairs just as quickly as she had descended them. They could hear her run about upstairs.

"I'm really freaking out here, Tony," Jay calmly explained in his normal, deep voice as he slowly shook his head. "What the fuck was that thing? I'm really… I'm really not thinking good right now, Tony."

"Same here, man, same here." There was more screaming outside. The fire was still raging… spreading, in fact.

Isabelle was running down the stairs, her light footsteps pounding against Tony's head, giving him a headache. Or was that the screaming that was doing that? Or the screeching of car tires? Or the roaring of something strange? Something inhuman?

"What's going on?" Isabelle wondered, rubbing her eyes. She was still in her pajamas, which were vivid, red silk. She was thirteen years old and dwarfed in size by fifteen year old Jay.

"Don't know," Tony replied curtly. "Go get dressed." Isabelle did nothing but stand there and look at them as though they were intruding into some private little world of hers. "Go!"

"Okay!" Isabelle snorted, offended. She turned around, her brown hair flying about. "I'm going, I'm going." She headed back up the stairs, taking her good old time about it.

She went halfway up the stairs before stopping. Her voice drifted back down, worried and honestly puzzled. "Is that screaming?"

"Yes! Hurry!" Jay shouted at her, his high voice back.

Isabelle hurried the rest of the way up the stairs. The screaming outside was intensifying. Both Tony and Jay understood that there was more than one of those creatures outside at that point. Many more than one.

Tony began to think about the creature. Obviously he had been having some sort of hallucination while half asleep. Nothing like that actually existed, of course. Pish-posh and lunacy was all that shit was. That screaming, though. That screaming wasn't fake. And Jay had seen it, too. He had screamed at the sight of it tearing Sandy apart. Oh, poor Sandy!

"We need a-a-a weapon or something," Jay began to rant moving his hands around as he spoke. "Dad doesn't have a, uh… a gun. I'll get the knives. And there's a hammer or something downstairs, right? I'll get that, too."

"Hurry up, Jay." Tony walked towards the door as Jay ran off. He didn't mind the coldness of the early morning anymore, his mind a billion miles away. He looked out the window and stared in disbelief.

Three houses were torches, now, with a fourth joining their ranks to light up the grizzly scene. The fire truck was partially on their lawn with the driver hanging half in and half out of the windshield, blood pooling around his caved in head. There weren't many people running; most had been run down by either one of the two-headed creatures or one of the taller, brown monsters. Tony stared at one such monster as it playfully disemboweled a middle-aged woman. Its leathery, brown skin stretched tight over large muscles. It had four red eyes and claws on each hand. It sliced through the skin of the woman as she writhed and squirmed and screamed underneath its weight. Tony could see the skin of the woman shriveling and blackening in heat. But Tony didn't know where the heat was coming from.

Moments later he got his answer. One of the four-eyed demons chucked a bright, orange ball at an escaping victim. Upon contact with the running man, the orange ball consumed him with flames. He dropped to the ground and rolled about, screaming in pain and agony. The heat was coming directly from the creatures' hands. This was all impossible. It was a dream of some sort. One of those super nightmares, of course. The ones where everything doesn't just seem real to your mind but is real to your mind.

There were running footsteps clambering down the stairs. His mother and father were fully dressed, his mother in a black dress and his father in a Led Zeppelin T-shirt with blue jeans. Judging from the aghast looks on their faces they had already looked out the window.

"Let's go, Tony," his mother ordered, grabbing his shirt.

"Where's your sister?" his father inquired, looking around. "Where's your brother? Go put some clothes on, Tony!"

"Isabelle's upstairs," Tony began, "Jay's collecting stuff in the kitchen, and I-I-I'll go do that, yeah." He walked quickly to the stairs and began to ascend them. He never ran unless it was absolutely necessary.

He entered his room and threw on a heavy, black shirt and a pair of jeans. Isabelle slammed her door and was running past his door to the stairs. Tony followed her.

Downstairs they grouped together like an intervention. Tony took an offered butcher knife from Jay. Everyone else had a knife except for Jay himself, who clutched a hammer in his small hands.

"What're we gonna do?" Tony asked his mother and father, feeling like he was under their legal guidance again. A child who has lost their direction.

"We're going to get to the cars, Tony," his father stated matter-of-factly.

"We don't know if it'll be safe to leave the house, though," his mother said, looking from face to face with her dark green eyes.

"What kind of thing is that to say?" Jay snorted with an upraised eyebrow. "Of course it isn't safe to leave the house! But it isn't safe to stay in the house either now is it?"

"I'll get the van," Victor, their father, sighed. He pulled out his key chain and spun it on his finger. "I'll pull it up to the front door and you all need to pile in the moment I get there, got it?" They all nodded and Victor headed towards the back door. Best to avoid unwanted attention. Isabelle looked about to have a heart attack. Her hazel eyes darted about looking at everything there was to look at. Her hands were white as they tightly compressed the handle of the knife. She was breathing rapidly and her red hair was becoming a mat on her head due to perspiration.

His mother seemed much more composed. The focus of her attention was constant, the sounds of chaos outside. Only one of her hands held the knife she had been supplied and it wasn't a vice grip she was giving it. She was sweating a lot, but her breathing was normal.

Jay seemed to be losing his mind even more than Isabelle as he paced back and forth while he muttered to himself under his breath. Tony found he was cursing under his breath as well. He also realized that his attention span was decreasing. Isabelle became a blur as his eyes began to spin around. This all had to be some sort of nightmare. It was too unjust to be real.  
He was very hungry all of a sudden and he wanted to shed himself of his clothing because it was far too warm. The thought of how cool the outside would be kept him from doing so. The thought of outside with all of its fire. All of its strange creatures that seemed to have been spawned straight from the pits of Hell.

He shook his head harshly and began to giggle. He shook his head again, further disorienting himself as his brain seemed to bounce about inside his head.

A hand fell on his shoulder and he stopped, embarrassed. "Are you all right?" his mother whispered into his ear.

Tony sighed, feeling his face burning as his face flushed. He had been acting so strangely and he could see behind her eyes that she was forming an opinion of some sort as though he was some kind of fucking mental case. Jay was still pacing behind him, muttering strange things to himself.

"Yeah, yeah. I'm fine."

"Are you sure?" she asked, above a whisper and worried. He looked into her eyes and saw that they seemed distant. Perhaps she was thinking about whether Victor was still living and breathing at that point.

"Yes," Tony replied slowly. He heard a car in the driveway. Gloria, his mother, snapped her head to the side to look in the direction of the noise.

She ran to the door and pulled it open. Victor pulled up in front of it moments later. Tony saw him yelling something with a crazed look in his eyes, but he couldn't hear what it was he was yelling.

"Go!" Gloria nudged Tony forth. Isabelle and Jay were already prying open the sliding door. Isabelle was in first. Tony ran up behind Jay and Gloria got into the passenger seat. Isabelle was standing bent over, staring out the window.  
Jay boarded the van and looked out the window, too.

"Oh shit!" he shrieked in that high voice again. He lunged forth and grabbed his sister by the arm. He tried to pull her away. Unfortunately he was too late. One of the two-headed creatures smashed through the window and grabbed her with blackened claws. Isabelle was screaming. Everyone was screaming.

Jay brought his hammer down on one of the thing's heads, succeeding in making one hell of a pounding sound. It sent him sprawling backwards into the seat unconscious with a well-placed roundhouse. Imagine that, a roundhouse.  
Tony jumped into the van with his knife raised, ready to plunge it into one of its glowing, orange eyes. It saw him coming and retreated outside… with Isabelle still in its arms.

"No!" Tony screamed and climbed out of the window after it. He landed awkwardly and shouted in pain, the handle of his knife driven into his side with the blade stuck in the ground. He managed to get himself into a sitting position to see where Isabelle and the creature were.

Isabelle was nowhere to be seen… but they could hear her screaming in pain as she was torn apart by something that could not possibly exist. And Tony found himself screaming again as he cried. Isabelle's screaming ended abruptly and Gloria was shrieking somewhere.

Tony found his legs and stumbled around to the sliding door and stepped up into the vehicle. He was crying uncontrollably, saliva dripping down his chin. He collapsed onto the front row of the backseats. Jay sat silently in the back, blissfully unaware of his sister's death as he dreamt.

Gloria was outside, running somewhere. Victor sat in shock, unwilling to force himself to drive the car or go get his wife. Tony sat up and looked out the shattered window. Most of the creatures had moved on and left behind were the dead bodies of many people. Men, women… children. A dead body for every single category of human beings that lived in the area, each one cast in an orange light by the six flaming houses. A seventh and an eighth were catching fire. Sirens were splitting his skull apart. Isabelle and Sandy were among the bodies. He couldn't see them but he knew they were there.

Jay's face was swollen from the punch that had been delivered by the fiend. Tony could only see Gloria's outline near the side of the house in the early sunlight. Victor stumbled out of his seat and shouted for Gloria to come back to the van. He was crying.

"Isabelle!" Gloria shrieked. She turned to Victor, and then came back to the van. She got into the passenger seat and Victor got into the driver seat. "We need to go get her," she stated adamantly, her body shaking and her cheeks sleek with tears mixed with sweat. Victor sat motionless in his seat. "We need to go get her," Gloria reiterated, her voice shaking just as much as her body. "We need to go get her now."

"Glor" Victor tried, his voice cracking.

"Now!" she exclaimed. Victor rubbed tears from his eyes and looked into Gloria's.

"G"

"Don't you dare," she warned him, shaking her head. "Don't you fucking"

"She's gone, Gloria!" Victor cried, overpowering her voice. "Isabelle's fucking gone!"

"Fuck you!" Gloria shouted back. The power of her voice was dwindling and she was crying harder than before. "She's not dead, she's not dead, she's not dead." Victor began to drive forward. "SHE'S NOT FUCKING DEAD!" Gloria roared and grabbed the steering wheel. Victor spiked the brakes mere moments before they collided with the front of the vibrant red fire engine. He pushed her away from the steering wheel roughly.

"Fuck off!" He pushed her back again and her head hit the window hard. She let out a brisk yell of pain. Victor kept going with the flow of his anger, rage, and grief.

"She's gone, Gloria. We can't do anything about it. Not one fucking thing and she… is… gone." Gloria didn't reply, she just sat back in her seat and cried, trying to deny it over and over again in her head. Tony was crying as well. He was back in kindergarten again, his teacher holding a conversation with his parents over his extreme problem with crying.

"She's gone," Victor reiterated, drawing back from his wife. He seemed to finally be understanding this fact himself. "She's gone," he almost whispered.

There was a very brief silence. The crackling of the flames was almost soothing, as were the flashing lights of the fire truck. The screaming and sirens were ever present, but distant, well away from all that was this van of misery.

"VICTOR!" Gloria suddenly shrieked, her eyes alight with fear. Suddenly the world was tipping over and everything was loud. Glass was obliterated and flew inwards, littering the van's inhabitants. Tony felt a sharp pain in the tip of his index finger upon landing on the van's ceiling, which was now its floor. Blood freely flowed from the glass shard-induced wound. He brought his finger into his mouth and began to suck it vigorously. Moments later he spit out the glass shard that had cut his skin, then resumed sucking.

Jay was shrieking his pain, wondering what the fuck was going on. Apparently he had awoken from his unconscious state. Tony moved himself into a sitting position, his body sore. Gloria and Victor were right beside him, both groaning as they painfully moved about. The side of Jay's face had been flayed by the sudden explosion of his window. Whatever had hit them had come from that direction.

Despite Jay's shrieking everything seemed silent again. Despite the slow but certain footsteps of something outside circling their van everything seemed calm.

Tony could see the burnt skin of four feet as they passed the openings that used to be possessed by full sheets of glass. This was the two-headed beast from before. The one with his little sister's blood on its claws. His… little…sister's… blood.

"Fucker!" Tony shouted as rage flashed through him alongside adrenaline. His arms darted out and he grabbed the creature by its front legs and pulled it towards him. It pulled against him and suddenly it was obvious he had misjudged his strength. Moments later found himself out on the cool grass with the creature's weight pressing down on his stomach. Gloria and Victor were screaming their displeasure somewhere well away from him. Maybe they were on the moon.

Death was certain. It was grinning at him with two mouths and staring at him with four orange eyes.

Victor was atop death suddenly with a knife plunged into one of its heads. The other retaliated less than a second later by tearing most the flesh on his forearm off with its razor sharp, fire blackened teeth. Suddenly it occurred to Tony that this was some sort of demon.

Victor clutched his arm as it sprayed blood. He toppled off the beast and its left head drooped downwards, dead with the knife buried deep into its skull. The remaining head nudged the dead one lightly, making a low grunting sound. When no response was received it looked at Victor with odium before it leapt on top of him. It was no longer so speedy.

"Hey!" Tony called after the demon. It didn't do a damn thing to signal that it had heard him as it bit his father several times. Tony wasn't about to lose his father, too. There had been enough killing for this day. He did what Victor had done for him: he leapt on its back.

Unfortunately he didn't have a knife to thrust into the remaining head, so he needed to settle for just getting its attention. It started trying to bite him, twisting its neck at impossible angles to take a stab at him with what seemed like a million tiny knives. He dodged easily enough, but understood he couldn't keep it up for more than another few seconds. So he quickly grabbed the knife embedded in the other head and tore it out (which took quite a lot of effort to do, by the way) and stabbed the living head. The demon collapsed almost immediately after the head's death. Tony began to repeatedly stab it. The world was nothing but a series of split-second clips that was doing nothing but disorienting him and infuriating him. He was so into the moment that he didn't even care that Victor was dead.

Gloria was beside his body, screaming her grief to the Earth… to the stars above. To everything that no longer gave a rat's ass.  
Then something happened. Something clicked inside his head and Tony stopped stabbing the demon. He wept on top of its body and hoped it was once again roasting in Hell. The fire had spread to a tenth house and the sun was lighting everything up. The birds were singing in the sky. The people were screaming. And suddenly Tony wanted to do nothing but sleep. Sleep the rest of his life away at that.

Unfortunately he couldn't do that. There was a long time between when then and when he would finally get to sleep… that is, depending on if he died or not. It just didn't seem fair. He needed the rejuvenation that it seemed only sleep was capable of offering. The miles seemed so very, very long… the road to sleep unending.

So he was crying once again. So what? So he was a little child again. Who cares?

Jay was limping away from them as quickly as he could, throwing panicked glances behind him… behind Tony and behind Gloria. And he was screaming. His greasy, brown hair bouncing as he tried to break into a full-fledged run and his back arched slightly like an old man.

That's when Tony heard whatever it was that was somewhere behind them. He didn't want to look, but he heard his mother's sharp intake of breath as she looked at what it was. She wasn't screaming; she was hyperventilating. He heard her scrambling backwards and looked over his shoulder to see her backing away like a crab that had evolved enough to walk directly backwards and forwards instead of side to side.

Tony heard something mechanical out of his field of vision. Hydraulics. So he turned on his back, rolling off the dead body of the demon he had killed, and looked.

He violently wiped away the tears in his eyes to get a better look… to see if the horrible thing down by the street coming towards them at a slow rate would prove to be an apparition and disappear. It didn't. It kept coming.

Eight mechanical legs hissed and hissed as they moved forward, bringing the beast atop the platform they carried closer and closer. Tony could not accept what he was seeing. The death of his loved ones, the fire-throwing demon, the two-headed demon, and even the fact that his life was about to be expunged were all more acceptable. This thing couldn't… it just could not exist. But it did. And highlighted in flame and the early morning light it was drifting towards him.

A pulsing brain the size of a child's bike sat atop the six foot mechanical legs, secured to their platform. Two small, glaring black eyes seemed to be burned into the front of the brain. A large mouth beneath them agape with a few buck-knife sized fangs exposed within with a gentle line of drool sliding outwards smoothly.

It just couldn't be, but it was. Suddenly when Gloria began to run it stopped coming forth and two gun barrels became alive with gunfire. Two streams of bullets grotesquely obliterated Gloria mid-run. Tony, luckily, failed to see this as he ran back to the house. He did see that the streams of bullets were slowly but surely turning to tear him apart.

After all of that he was back at square one moments later. Standing in his house with the door locked and looking outside with dread. Except this time he was four family members, a butcher knife, and an automobile to escape with short. God he felt sick and so very, very tired.

He hit the ground and curled up into a ball when the bullets sprayed in through the windows and the wall. The door blew apart like cheap wood.

That's when the Brain ceased fire. It was only a brief moment of peace; it was coming to investigate, moving much faster than before by the sounds of it. Tony was up and moving again. Running through the living room to the dining room and through the dining room to the kitchen and through the kitchen to the back door. Tony hit it with his shoulders, trying to break it open like on the movies, and sprawled backwards, his limbs spread out in a shape similar to a swastika. He held his shoulder and groaned in pain. At least he wasn't tired anymore.

When a sound came to his ears from the front of the house that made him at first think the roof was falling down on his head he was on his feet. He carefully opened the door and didn't bother to close it behind him. It was the first time ever that he didn't shut that door behind him upon leaving and not doing so left a strange feeling in his stomach.

Their yard was fenced in on two sides (left and right of the house), but the third side that would've normally been fenced was not. It was a steep hill that lead up to the cemetery. It wasn't too hard to climb, but it would be a pretty bad fall if he lost his grip. Not to mention that he'd be easy picking for a certain psychotic, giant brain with two gatling guns while hanging off the side. So how would he escape? Not through the driveway because that's one of the two routes the Brain would be using to get back at him. The more probable route, actually.

He could jump the fences. Unfortunately he wasn't good at that and the last time he had tried he had wound up with a broken collarbone and a small crack in his skull merely two years ago. He hadn't improved in athletic ability or size since then.  
He took another look at the hill in front of him, the house behind him, and he took a running leap at the fence. For a moment it was going well, then his second leg got caught and he landed hard on his back with blood soaking into his shoe. He vaguely enjoyed how warm it felt on his sock-lacking feet.

For a minute or so he laid there motionless, drifting dangerously close to passing out. The sound of mechanical legs hissing as they lifting themselves up to pound the ground in a different spot could've been a lifetime away from him at that moment. Distant, but completely and totally inevitable. The Brain was in his backyard looking around and he couldn't stop laughing suddenly, eliminating any time at all he might've had to sneak away while the Brain was checking out other possible escape routes.

Understanding this had happened, Tony began to sit up. Then he laid right back down once the planks of wood that made up the fence began to splinter and bullets began to fly through.

He thought that maybe the bullets would stop flying soon, any moment, but they didn't. They kept tearing apart the fence… and the fence across the yard, and the fence across the next yard moving to and fro across the yard. The gunfire was deafening. He couldn't hear a damn thing. So he began to roll on the wet grass towards his deceased neighbor's driveway. He reached the cover that was the garage and stood up immediately. He screamed at the unexpected pain in his ankle. He almost slapped himself for not expecting that sort of thing from a gash. Almost puking at the squishing sound of blood in his shoes he began to painfully walk away from the backyard.

When the gunfire finally stopped (causing his ears to ring like they were small rooms packed from floor to ceiling with a billion telephones) Tony glanced back over his shoulder. Apparently the Brain had been using the gunfire to cover the noise its legs created when the walked. It was now standing half in and half out of his neighbor's backyard atop several demolished planks of wood, looking around for him. Ignoring the objections of his injured foot he tore through the air with five running steps to get out of any line of sight it could have from its position.

The Brain was smart enough to understand where he was, so it followed. By the time it reached the front lawn Tony was half way down the street, incapable of being aimed at properly. The Brain didn't give chase. Instead it turned around, back the way it had come, and went towards the nearest screams to cause more damage.

Tony went as quickly and painlessly as he could through the world with fifteen flaming houses lighting his way more than the early rising sun could, painting him in orange, yellow, and red as he fled.


	2. Enter Ashley Pasquale

**2: Enter Ashley Pasquale**

When the horror finally reached the young Ashley Pasquale's neighborhood, the death toll was in the hundreds. It was so high, and millions still had no idea that anything was going on at all as they slept the early morning away, their alarm clocks silent and dark, their electricity cut off nearly half an hour beforehand.

Usually around this time Ashley would find herself waking up to David, her boyfriend, rolling off the bed begrudgingly to go to work. This had become so routine that she had begun to wake up even after he had moved down to Pennsylvania. Every time she woke up she'd smile to herself a little. "Good fucking riddance," is what that smell so contentedly proclaimed. She didn't know how long she had been fucking John before David finally figured it all out and left, hoping to leave her with too much on her plate. Bills to be specific. The house she inhabited still three months later was too big for a single person and too small for a family of three or four. It was sized just right for the two of them. Now it was too big and she needed to clean it all by herself weekly. Now she had to pay electricity, cable, internet, etc. all by her lonesome with a measly job. Not to mention rent. She was lucky to have lasted for as long as she did. Two weeks later she would have been forced to move out and into a smaller house.

All of this hadn't been so bad with David finally gone and out of her life. The drug addicted, sex obsessed, lazy fucker had been quite basically living with her just to say, "Wham, bam, thank you ma'am," every night. Now that he was gone, she would try her best to smile as she strode uphill with the weight of the world on her back with no real end to the arduous trek in sight.

Ashley opened her eyes and looked out at the world, illuminated by the early sun. Beautiful, tranquil, silent, and seemingly completely oblivious to all suffering of any kind.

She needed to be to work at the electronics shop soon. There she would work an eight hour shift as a clerk, dealing with assholes and cunts and mother-fuckers and all other assortments of bad names for pieces of shit with a few gems of kindness shining through that made it slightly easier to get through the day. When she came home she would maybe surf the internet or flip channels for an hour before attempting to find a friend to go out somewhere with. Usually she would be left all alone to the silence of her house and eventually fall asleep, finally not needing to deal with a raging hard-on beforehand.

Ashley went to the small, second floor bathroom and stripped off her white nightgown. She flipped the light switch, but the bulb remained dormant. She tried twice more and then put it on her to-do list to replace the blown-out bulb. Shyly she urinated and rubbed her knees, feeling as though a thousand eyes were watching her and not understanding why she felt like that. The morning air felt very chilly.

She examined herself in the medicine-cabinet mirror utilizing the growing amount of sunlight. Doing this she began to criticize herself. She grabbed a small amount of fat at her stomach and glared at herself. She didn't like being fat but she had been for the past ten years since puberty began. Only in recent years had she been doing something about it, but the fat was still there. David had said that it was hardly noticeable, but she could notice it. She stopped cursing at herself for still being fat because she knew it would do no good. She wouldn't become bulimic or anorexic because she wasn't that obsessed with her less-than-perfect appearance, and she wouldn't change her diet or increase her exercise level either.

Aside from some embarrassing nose hairs and her train-wrecked, greasy, brunette hair there was nothing much wrong with her face. Her green eyes were slightly blood shot with bags under them. Humorlessly, she smiled at the mirror. Poorly kempt teeth bared themselves as her lips pulled back and away. She never flossed and usually brushed once a day. This resulted in slightly yellow teeth that required braces for realignment. She had never had braces before and wasn't about to get them now. She grabbed her aging toothbrush and turned the faucet on. The water didn't come. She tried a couple more times, slapped it, and decided to brush without water. Quickly and haphazardly she brushed her teeth with some cheap, generic toothpaste and re-examined them as if expecting them to have become pearly-whites. Needless to say they hadn't improved a bit. And now she had chunks of toothpaste in the cracks of her teeth which made matters worse. She sighed and gave up the cause temporarily.

Then she took a few small steps back. She believed her boobs to be too small… B-cups. There was a mole on the right one that she wished wasn't there. Stress was catching up to her. Suddenly all she wanted was for David to be there to caress her again. Her pace was slowing as she trudged uphill with that pesky world on her back and her smile disappearing. She decided that she needed to shave her pubic hair. Her legs were too fat for their length. There were too many calluses on her feet, her legs were too hairy, her ass too small, her nipples too large. God she wanted to just fall back asleep. All tranquility was gone from her mind. She stepped into the shower and turned the water on. It didn't come. She turned it off then back on again and it still didn't come. She hit it in frustration and put her nightgown back on. She felt her legs breaking as she struggled to keep the world up. Struggled to reach the nonexistent end of the road, not fooling herself that it was there and not admitting that it wasn't she trudged on.  
Inside her room that seemed so empty all of a sudden with all of David's traces eradicated she got dressed. She put on a bra, panties, a black, baggy T-shirt and baggy jeans, held up with a belt. All of her clothes were a size or two larger than necessary. This way she looked skinnier.

She put on white ankle socks and tears began to form at her eyes. Three years ago she had given it the good old college try to kill herself. She had slit her wrists. There are lots of people who slit their wrists horizontally. These people are either stupid, insincere about suicide, or just looking for attention. Ashley was none of these. She had taken a kitchen knife and slit her arm open from the wrist to the elbow on both arms, the blood practically spraying out. The dam had been broken.

A couple minutes later David had found her near a small pond in the middle of the woods. Ashley had first gone skinny dipping in the pond on the same night she lost her virginity, which is why she chose that secluded area to die in. She cried as she remembered looking at him, dressed in pure white and bleeding profusely and as he called for his friends to come help. The tears and sobs flowed as she recalled the first time she met the man she would come to yearn, come to hate, and then come to yearn again.

Then it was over and she stopped crying. There was no slow trip to the end of her crying… it just stopped. She wiped the tears away from her cheeks and put on her gym shoes. She would go walking is what she would do. No, not walking; jogging. She would jog down the street and back. Fuck that! She would jog down the street, up the street, and then back. Then she would call in sick to work (her last sick day of the year) and do it all over again. Then she would take her old, beaten up car and sell it. Then she would visit to her mother's house ten miles away, walking to it and then back from it. She would use the money from her car and prolong her life in this large house and her search for a smaller apartment. Her pace quickened and the world began to feel lighter. She began to smile again. Fuck David. Fuck him up the ass with a two-by-four. She didn't need him.

Running down the stairs she felt happier than she had in a very long time in a way that was not stimulated by sexual pleasure. Petty things chewed fruitlessly at her mind. She needed to find out why her shower wasn't working and why her sink wasn't working. She needed to bathe in one way or another. She needed to replace the bulb in the bathroom. Cheerfully her mind extended a giant middle-finger at these petty problems and laughed.

She got to the front door and paused, her hand hovering inches away from the door handle. Her no longer bloodshot eyes squinted as they tried to make out what they were seeing through the veil over the front door's small window. Orange and yellow light was traveling across her porch. Ashley assumed it was a torch. Suddenly she felt like she was fending off villagers in Resident Evil 4 again. Except she didn't have a gun and this wasn't a videogame.

The phone raced through her mind. She decided to call 9-11 and report a man standing on her porch with a torch. She turned around and walked quickly into the kitchen, where the blue, cordless phone was layered to the wall. She pried it off its base and held it to her ear to listen for a dial-tone. There was none. She began to trail the wire and stopped. Suddenly everything clicked together like two speeding trains colliding head-on. The shower, the sink, the light, the phone… she had no electricity.

"But I paid the bill!" she whispered to herself gruffly. "I paid the fucking b"

More things came together. A torch on the porch and a lack of electricity. A riot must have been in progress. She felt a moment of panic before realizing that things were far too silent for a riot. No screams, explosions, or gun shots. Everything sounded just prance-through-the-field-of-dandelions dandy. So what was going on?

She went back to the front door and pulled the veil partially back to see if the light was indeed a torch on her porch. It most certainly was not a torch on her porch… it was a floating skull with razor-sharp teeth and horns… on fire of course. Ashley shrieked and jumped back from the door. The skull hadn't seen her as it went about existing. It seemed to not appreciate its own eccentricity. Its own ridiculousness and impossibility.

Continuing to back up she began to breathe more rapidly. Almost hyperventilating. Apparently it had heard her scream because it shot through the glass of the front door's window, sending shards in every direction. Without slowing down or being disoriented by hitting the pane of glass it came for her. She moved her head to the side out of instinct, and shrieked as extreme pain coursed through her face. Warmth followed. Blood. It had torn a chunk out of her right cheek, forming a ragged hole.

"Oh my God!" she screamed and grabbed her torn cheek. That only made it hurt more, which made her squeeze the skin in her hand tighter, closing the hole in her cheek and momentarily stopping the flow of blood. She doubled over in pain and felt blood seeping through her fingers as she screamed. Her grip hurt it and her screaming hurt it, but she couldn't stop either.

The skull came back at her… this time off-target. It sailed over her head, close enough to cause extreme heat to course over Ashley's scalp, and hit the wall hard. It turned back around to face her, apparently pissed off that she had managed to evade it. Ashley tried to stop screaming as she looked into this skull's eyes of flames. Her mind was in overdrive, fueled by adrenaline, and she thought of Ben Stein talking about Clear Eyes.

Her skin… her skin was roasting in its mouth! Burning to a crisp as the fires of Hell licked away at it.

She spun around on her feet and ran with one arm pumping and the other still holding her cheek tightly. Pain and fear were all that she knew. She lifted her foot up quickly to run up the stairs, just not high enough. She toppled forth and rolled back down the stairs, groaning as she tried valiantly to overcome the pain coursing through her body and boiling her blood.

The skull gracefully floated around the corner into sight and Ashley got to her feet and ran up the stairs. It raised directly upwards and launched itself at her again once she reached the top of the stairs. She dodged it and ran for her room, not noticing that it had exited the house through a window and was across the street.

She fell into the bathroom and slammed the door shut behind her. The white floor became red as she let loose of her cheek and grabbed for the medicine cabinet on her knees, leaving bloody handprints on the sink as she used it to pull herself up a bit more. She grabbed the handle of the medicine cabinet and swung it open. Of course she wasn't any sort of nurse or doctor, but she knew a little bit about what to do. Her mind on autopilot she stood up and grabbed a bag of cotton balls with shaking hands. Suddenly she wanted nothing greater than to kill anyone and everyone who said, "No pain, no gain."

One cotton ball went in and stuck to her wound, turning red from white. Another went in followed by a third and a fourth. She dropped the bag and a couple flew out and scattered on the floor. Her fist pounded the sink multiple times before she clutched it and moaned in pain. She was trying to force the pain in her cheek to the back of her mind and it wasn't working.

"Fuck!" she attempted to shriek with a muffled voice. Her tongue licked the bloody cotton balls and suddenly she wanted to throw up. Nothing would have brought her greater happiness than upchucking into the toilet.

Now it sounded like a riot was going on outside. A bigger one than this side of town had ever seen before. More of that fiery light was filtering in through the windows of the house. The world was on fire. In that aspect it was not unlike Ashley's mind.

Her fists began to pound her head. This did nothing to ease her pain, but, again, she couldn't stop doing it. She began to whimper, helpless to stop the pain from coming. She stood up and looked at her face in the mirror, red cotton balls filling her cheek and blood streams gleaming down her neck. Her heart was pumping so hard it felt like it was going to explode. She had no Tylenol or Aspirin to relieve the pain (if they would've worked on this extreme amount anyway) because she had always been scared of inadvertently taking an overdose and dying. She may have wanted nothing more than a slow and painful death a few years ago, but that's one of the last things she wanted now. She wondered how she could disinfect the wound, something she would need to do soon. Maybe the floating skull had rabies!

Ashley laughed at her ugly face in the mirror. Cotton balls in her cheek, nose hair in her nose, greasy, messy hair, Jesus she looked in no way presentable! By God that laughter hurt.

Ashley began to sift through the items in her medicine cabinet, flinging the few useless items over her shoulder where they would contact with the floor and become in some way damaged. Iodine was the last of the few things she saw in the cabinet and she immediately applied it and screeched something that sounded almost inhuman as even greater pain swept through her, threatening to knock her out and leave her at the mercy of whatever other nightmarish entity decided to float, waltz, slither, swim, fly, or whatever else on in out of the cold and shout, "Lucy I'm home, NOW PREPARE TO DIE!"

Luckily she overcame the need to ebb out of reality and descend into the confusing, inane world of dreams. Her head was pulsing and a vein in her head was popping out as she gritted her teeth and glared at her undesirable image in the mirror. A bruise was spreading, and her cheek was already swelling. Shit.

This is about when she began to think of things outside her personal little world of pain, misery, suffering, and any other negative word you can think of. She'd need a weapon. A kitchen knife was a bit clumsy and she had bad memories of them. Her baseball bat from childhood would work better… that is if she had three hours to search through the dark, bat-infested attic to find it at the bottom of a musty box buried under a dozen or so other musty boxes. No, the kitchen knife would have to suffice unfortunately.

She went back downstairs, not looking out either of the two shattered windows and trying her best to ignore what felt like a red hot poker impaling her cheek. She veered into the kitchen and went to the cutting block and retrieved the largest kitchen knife. An eight inch blade with a four inch handle.

After this she went back upstairs and looked outside through her broken window. Complete chaos.

A couple of houses were burning. People were screaming from inside their houses as they were tortured and killed. A few people were running up and down the street from creatures that were almost unbearable to look at. Two-headed creatures and tall brown creatures roamed the streets, the latter tossing fireballs about. In the sky there were a few flying skulls, one of them doubtlessly had a certain annoying bit of skin stuck in their teeth.

She heard above the screaming and crackling of flames what seemed to be a piggish growl. Her eyes trailed to a little girl running down the sidewalk directly across the street from her. This was six-year old Victoria, a little girl that had befriended Ashley not too long ago. Ashley muffled a shriek for her to run faster once she spotted what was giving chase.

The creature had to weigh in at a ton at least. At first she didn't understand anything about what she was looking at. A moment later she compared it to three things simultaneously in her mind. A pig because of the sound it was emitting, a bull because it was charging like a bull, and a dog because its pig snarl became something similar to a series of barks. Its folds of fat stretched as it ran full-speed towards the three foot girl who was a fraction of its size. Its front feet had small claws that dug up the sidewalk. Its mouth was lined with millions of teeth as it extended from underneath a fold of fat. Then she realized that its hindquarters were mechanical. Its hind legs propelled it more rapidly through the air than any biological legs could. In moments it was on top of Victoria and she was screaming.

Ashley ran away from the window screaming and crying with a muffled voice. She ran into her room and collapsed on her bed with the knife clenched in one hand. Her cheek was swelling so quickly. She could barely open her eye on that side of her face.

She wanted to pass out. Unfortunately for her, the world did not yield to the other world. She laid across her bed and cried, waiting for the dream world to take over. It never came.


	3. Enter Shaun Bezwin

**3: Enter Shaun Bezwin**

Shaun Bezwin was woken up by screams. These screams were distant, but loud enough to enter his dreams and manipulate his mind's version of a peaceful afternoon with his girlfriend into a nightmare with dead people standing around screaming endless, horrified screams. He had woken up screaming himself.

He was fourteen and considered himself to be the wisest that he ever would be. He didn't fool himself into believing he knew everything, but he knew that his mind was possessed of more knowledge than was average for one his age. He was only slightly overweight and a few of the girls at his school dug him (his girlfriend obviously included). His face reflected a sort of mysterious innocence that he did not have. He was just beginning to sprout a mustache, and his black hair was constantly combed back, giving him an old-school cool effect. Like Fonzi.

His wardrobe was composed of all sorts of oddities. His shirts ranged from plain to extravagant. His favorite-and the one he was wearing at the moment-was a black T-shirt that had a cross and a pentagram beneath giant, white words: "DECISIONS, DECISIONS." Shaun swung himself out of his "Star Wars" themed bed already fully clothed considering he slept in his clothes. He needed to piss badly, but he was transfixed by the distant screams. Then came scattered gunfire and explosions.  
The bedroom's single window had its blinds pulled down, so nothing but blue-tinted light could seep through. No images that would allow him to know what was going on down the street.

Traveling across his small room was a hard task because of the heaps of dirty clothes that littered the floor along with plastic bags that had been used long ago and three empty laundry baskets. Not to mention some clean clothes.

He made it to the door and opened it. In the hall outside was silence and poor lighting to greet him. The ground was beginning to vibrate.

His parents came stumbling out of their room half-awake. His mother was in her blue bath robe and his father was in his boxers. Both looked extremely tired. His father had rumpled brown hair and beard stubble. He was covered in perspiration. His mother had blonde hair that was more well-kempt for even this early, jerk-awake morning than his father's. She was looking around with the eyes of a stoned stoner.

Shaun walked over to them. He was six feet tall to the inch, which meant he towered two inches above his father and four above his mother.

"What's going on?" Shaun inquired, knowing full-well beforehand that his parents had no clue even if they were awake enough to fully understand the question.

"No clue," his father replied in a very sluggish voice. His eyes were bloodshot.

The screams were much closer now, and Shaun understood that soon the screams would be coming from within their own house. The dead were coming for them. The dead from his dream. They would find him and drag him into their world of torment for all eternity. Grinning skulls with bits of skin hanging off of them and screaming banshees galore. He began to panic.  
An explosion from down the street caused by a wide shot fired by a man wielding a 9mm pistol connecting with the gas tank of a Dodge truck caused his parents to snap awake.

"I'm gonna get the gun," his father muttered and ran back into the room. A lot of crashing and banging ensued before his father reappeared in the hall with their hunting rifle in one hand and a box of bullets in the other. He had a shirt thrown over his back that was not buttoned up in the middle. "Jane, I need you to get the hammers from the basements and nails. A lot of nails."

"Board up the windows?" his mother asked.

"And the doors," he stated. "Go with her Shaun." "We don't have any boards of wood," Shaun stated simply. His father paused to think.

"Then j-just grab some tables and chairs for Christ's sake!" "Okay," Shaun said.

"Grab something wooden and slap it over a fucking window!" "I got it!" Shaun shouted as he sped down the stairs, aggravation seeping into his voice. People didn't need to make the same point twice. It's gotten the first time, move on! He hated people; they annoyed him greatly.

Now that his mind was cleared with the clouds of anger and annoyance, Shaun understood it wasn't the dead coming for them. What then? Terrorists? Rioters? It didn't matter at the moment.

He overturned the coffee table in the living room and snapped off the legs. The wood was fragile, but it was better than nothing.  
Jane hurried past him and into the kitchen. She went down the stairs. That was the last time that Shaun saw her.  
Right behind her came his father. He had loaded the gun and began to rush him. They grabbed the dining room table and tore the legs off, which was significantly more difficult to do with the dining table than with the coffee table. The screams were now across the street and next door. Soon they would be screaming. More gunfire was sounding. Fire was crackling and the light filtering in through the windows was yellow and orange instead of blue.

"Hon?" his father shouted down to the basement. "Jane! We need those goddamned nails!" There was no answer received. His father lost his rushed mood. "Jane?" he called cautiously.

Shaun grew a rather large pit in his stomach and he went numb all over. He knew what his father had not yet accepted. His mother was dead. She hadn't screamed to let them know of the danger. She was just dead.  
His father began to descend the stairs.

"Dad!" Shaun shouted after him. "Don't go down there!" "JANE!" his father's scared voice rang out. Then he repeated himself, this time in shock and dismay. Shaun heard sobs begin to sound above the dying screams and decreasing amount of gunfire.

"DAD GET THE FUCK BACK UP HERE!" Shaun roared. His father was weeping in the basement. Then silence took hold on the house.

Shaun held his breath as he waited for his father's dying scream. Whatever had killed his mother was now going after his father, Shaun had no doubt of that.

"D?" he began. The thundering blast of the hunting rifle cut him off. "DAD!" Another gunshot sounded. Then his father began to scream. There were heavy, rushed footsteps on the basement's stairs. His father appeared in the kitchen with droplets of blood covering him.

"We need to go," he stated as calmly as he could. He was out of breath.

"What the fuck was that?" Shaun thundered.

"We need to go NOW!" "Jesus fucking Christ mom's dea!" The front door in the dining room flew off its hinges and hit the ground hard. What entered the house then was a monstrosity that Shaun could not accept.

It was twice the size of a Saint Bernard. Its pinkish-gray skin was loose over the upper-half of its dog-like, muscular body. It had no eyes or nostrils. A mouth was exposed under a large fold of skin at the front of the monster that was full of hundreds of needle-like teeth. Its two front legs were small claws that looked very sharp.

That in itself was not so hard to accept. It was easy and entertaining to look at if a bit frightening. But… what made this thing so horrifying, so unacceptable, and so unbelievable was the lower-half of its body.

A robotic anus met the warmth of the air, supported by two large, robotic legs. The shiny, gunmetal gray of the creature's hide threw Shaun's mind off. Biomechanics were not that advanced yet. That combined with the fact that he had no way of stating why the biological portion of the creature existed scared him and confused him. This in turn angered him.

The creature that reminded Shaun of both a dog and a bull at the same time launched itself across the room at a surprising speed and landed on top of his father, who was closer to the biomechanical dog/bull than Shaun was.

Crimson liquid speckled the room as his father's face was chewed off by the dog/bull. Shaun didn't hear the screaming, but he knew it was there to be heard.

The hunting rifle had fallen from his father's grip and was now conveniently at Shaun's feet. His eyes traveled to it, then back to the scene of his father being murdered. He slowly bent over and grabbed the gun. His father was dead now and the dog/bull was chewing a dead body, oblivious to Shaun's existence.

Shaun slowly took aim at the monster's mouth with the gun, then trailed upwards slightly. He believed he was aiming at its brain-if it had a brain-so he thought it would be a one-shot kill. So he pulled the trigger confidently.

The kick of the gun made him lose grip on it and it clattered to the ground. The dog/bull yelped-that's right, yelped-in pain and took four leaps back to the door before turning around, reddish-black blood seeping down the rolls of fat and skin that made up its head. It then emitted a grunt. Shaun wondered how it could see him, or anything for that matter. He saw no eyes. But the dog/bull charged dead-on towards him.

It overturned three still-standing chairs in the center of the room where the legless dining table sat, flipped-over, and leapt higher than it had before at him. It obviously meant that to be the distance-closing leap for the kill. Unfortunately the dog/bull did not appreciate its own obviousness and did not anticipate Shaun getting out of the way in time.

Shaun doubled back and grabbed the hunting rifle from the floor, cursing in his mind that they didn't have a 12-gauge shotgun. Foreseeing the kick the gun would give with the pull of a trigger, Shaun kept hold of it even after squeezing off two rounds.  
One hit the dog/bull in the inverted knee of its front-right leg and made it yelp again. The other shattered its upper-jaw and caused the oddly colored blood to spray everywhere.

Shaun wondered what caused the color of this demon's blood. A strange sort of hemoglobin? He shook the thought off. To try and understand this creature would be to accept its existence. He realized that the word 'demon' felt right in accordance with speaking of this thing. Of course it wasn't a demon-it was a biomechanical creature-but that word felt so… so right.

An imp was a small demon. Shaun momentarily considered using this term for the dog/bull hybrid, but decided against it. Imp didn't feel right in accordance with the dog/bull.

He began to chuckle. He looked at his father's body and burst out laughing. Tears of grief sprayed out of his eye sockets, but he was laughing heartily as he cried. It was as though the world's best gem had just been cracked in earshot of him.

Then a brown demon with four eyes and claws for hands and feet burst into the room and leapt onto the wall. It climbed up the wall quickly and dangled from the ceiling.

"Hey, imp," Shaun greeted the demon. He wasn't shocked by this new creature; it wasn't nearly as horrific as the dog/bull. His running feet carried him out of the room as a fireball whipped past his face, singing his eyebrows and severely drying his eyes. He groaned in dismay and began to blink. The tears were helping, but his vision was still blurred.

He turned to the entrance of the kitchen he had retreated into and aimed the gun at the fast-moving brown shape. He popped off a shot and got the imp in the shoulder. It hissed and leapt onto the wall just above the doorway leading into kitchen, letting it reside out of his view as it recovered from the gunshot.

While the imp recovered, Shaun's vision cleared. When it reappeared, Shaun blasted a bullet through its head. Brain matter and blood painted the air behind its head. Then it collapsed heavily on the floor.

Shaun thanked videogames and bee-bee guns for training him in the world of aiming. His eyes continued to water over his dead parents, but his mind wandered. He needed to get out of there. He needed to survive.

He needed to get to Reeda's house. His girlfriend. He had forgotten about her until that point. Now she took up his mind. He ran to the phone and dialed her number, but the phone was dead.

Shaun grabbed the box of bullets his father had set down before helping with the dining table and reloaded the rifle quickly. It had a ten-bullet clip and he had used seven of said bullets.

He then grabbed two kitchen knives and tucked them into his jean pockets. After that he went outside and into the Hell that Earth had become.

He was the first to discover that floating, flaming skulls weren't the only horror the sky had to offer.

It was a head the size of a large man. It had four small horns extending from the top of its cranium. One green eye was set in the center of the floating head. Its skin was red and folded with fat. A very large mouth peeled open as the cyclops spotted Shaun. Teeth were exposed.

Shaun charged down the chaos-ridden streets without ever looking back. A ball of static-electricity soared out of the floating head's mouth and exploded on the ground right on his heels and made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. He ran in the general direction of Reeda's house as Hell engulfed Earth.


	4. Enter Richard Eetre

**4: Enter Richard Eetre**

He always heard the chuckle behind everyone's eyes when he introduced himself. The laughter. His name was Richard Eetre. Dick is short for Richard, so his name was also Dick Eetre. By the way, his last name was pronounced 'eater.' Behind his back he was known as the eater of dicks. He resented his last name and his first name. After puberty the jokes had begun. At first he had laughed along with those laughing at him. Har-dee-fucking-har. After a while, however, the novelty of his name wore off.  
Richard began to hate everyone who brought his name up to him. At points he got by himself and pounded on his own skull in frustration and rage. He experienced many head aches through his teenage years. Then he began to hit his girlfriends.

The injustice of it all. His family that had given up on him after he failed Biology one year and English the next. The child his girlfriend had not allowed him to know existed before getting an abortion. The so-called friends who screwed him over and landed him in jail for a full year and a half when they were caught selling drugs. He hadn't had a thing to do with that business! That had been their cross to bear! But they had pointed their fingers at him nonetheless.

He let it all loose on his girlfriends. All but one left after the first beating. His latest one before the outbreak of demons lingered. She got off on it in a sexual manner. The more she bruised, the harder she came.

He loved her. She let him take his stress out on her, and she didn't laugh at his name. She made no jokes about it. Brooke Vega was who Richard thought he was meant for. She didn't need to cover up her bruises because all of her friends knew of her special sexual needs. On top of it all, she had a personality and intelligence. She was a movie chick and loved to play videogames whenever there was a group to play them with. On top of all that she was decently hot with nice tits.

She loved him, too. She never vocally proclaimed it, but she did. This was the closest to actually believing in love she came.  
They moved in together after a single year of their relationship and relished each other's company. They spent their lives together in a twisted romance.

Six months after moving in together Richard woke up just before ten. His bladder let loose all over the bed and his mind locked up. He screamed with the others he didn't hear.

Two impossible things were on the bed that he had shared for six months with Brooke.

The first was a brown monster taller than him with claws and four red dots for eyes and a fireball in its hand staring down at him with what Richard imagined to be a grin.

The second was Brooke's dead and mangled body half-on and half-off the side of the bed. Her blood was staining the yellow-and-white bedspread.

Richard moved his pillow in front of his head just in time to block the thrown fireball from the imp. He then threw the flaming pillow to the side and rolled out of bed. The air was cold against his nude body and he shivered.

The imp hurled its four-hundred pound body through the air towards Richard. He ducked down and the imp hit the wall so hard the house shook and a couple DVDs fell from the shelf next to the television on the wall opposite the bed, where the shattered door was. The imp fell to the ground, either unconscious or temporarily disoriented.

Richard stood unmoving, the window for his escape inching shut as the clock ticked. Brooke's legs had been all of her that he had seen before. They had been coated in blood that had not yet coagulated. He had wished after the fact that he hadn't looked at the portion of her that was off the bed.

This was pain that she had not gotten off on.

Her left breast was gone, and her lungs were spread across the floor. Her broken ribcage was exposed all the way down her chest, and her intestines laid, torn up, on her stomach. Her eyes were closed and her mouth open in an eternal scream that had been turned into a lopsided grin by her lack of a right cheek and the exposure of her jaws. Her nose was absent from class, nowhere to be seen, and her right ear was torn in half. Her dirty blonde hair was a bloody mess that she would not have the chance to clean up.

"Oh fuck," Richard managed to get out in a small voice. "Oh, Jesus. Oh, you bit… oh, you fucking… What the fuck? You bitchy bitch. Goddammit… God… Fucking piece of shit… Goddammit. WHAT THE FUCK?" He then threw on his jeans and a plain, black T-shirt. The cold was killing him, and to move along as though he had not just seen the mutilated body of his year-and-a-half girlfriend would make it easier to get out of the house and call for help. The imp began to move again. This time it had learned not to miss.

Richard disappeared down the hall, hurrying as much as he could without breaking into a jog or a run. His mind would lose hold if he went any faster. He had a small pistol in his workroom next to the first floor's bathroom.  
He got down the stairs without hurrying and continued walking quickly. He darted a quick look behind him when he heard the heavy, running footsteps upstairs that suggested either his girlfriend was coming to pull him down into Hell for all eternity… or the imp was coming to do just the same.

"Not happening… impossible… fucking piece of shit…" he began to mutter under his breath. It became a chant, then almost a song as he added more sentence fragments.

His house's décor was depressing down the hall leading to his cluttered workroom and the stench-filled bathroom. Poor lighting and blank, gray walls.

His workroom was full of encyclopedias, dictionaries, leisure books, and non-required reading. This on top of his laptop and piles of paper-airplanes constructed during moments of extreme boredom. His laptop was full to the brim with downloaded pornography that Richard believed Brooke would frown upon if she were to see it. Thinking of Brooke was a mistake. Richard stopped walking just outside of his workroom.

His mind shut-down and grief hit him like a shotgun blast to the gut. He dropped to his knees and drool leaked out of his mouth and streamed gently down to his chin where it collected into a droplet and fell to the hardwood floor.

The imp's screech as it tripped and fell headfirst down the stairs was what dragged him kicking and screaming back to reality.  
He leapt to his feet and pulled the door open, almost tearing it off without turning the handle. He rushed in and slammed it behind him.

He charged to his desk, his mind already losing its grip from that short amount of running. He threw the first two drawers across the room after merely glancing inside. On the final of the three drawers he found the small, already loaded pistol. He had been instructed once by a security guard friend how to use a gun. He did the first thing anyone should do before using their gun after retrieving it from a long-dormant situation: he checked to make certain it was loaded.  
The ten-bullet clip was full. Richard trained it on the door and waited. His breath came raggedly and his legs felt weak. His finger's muscles loosened from their ready tension, and his mind locked up again. He couldn't believe Brooke was dead. It couldn't be possible. He closed his eyes and sobbed twice. He lowered the gun and began to rub the tears from his eyes.  
The imp was drawing closer and Richard was locked up. It was charging down the hall. Richard was moments from death and all he could do was cry.

The moment before the door flew off its hinges and into the wall next to Richard's work desk he had unlocked his mind and began to raise the gun.

The imp charged in and whacked at his hand, meaning to make him lose his grip on the gun. It didn't work; Richard retained his grip on the gun. He gained a boost of confidence after realizing that the gun posed a threat to this thing, and that the thing knew it. He brought the gun back and shot the imp in the shoulder, not having time to aim for a more deadly blow. This all happened in the space of two seconds.

The imp lurched backwards and screeched. Blood spewed from its wound. It looked at the bullet hole, then back at Richard. This slow motion was meant to impose. Instead it allowed Richard to aim perfectly and blow its brains out through a large hole in the back of its head.

Once the imp's body hit the ground Richard lowered the gun to his side again. "Fucking… fucking… fucking fucking fucking… fucking piece of shit. Please… why? What'd me do? Me? Me… me… I… nothing… I'm innocent… she's dead… I'm innocent… she's dead… not me… what'd she do? Anything? A-Anything? NO! SHE DID NOTHING! WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU? WHAT… THE FUCK ARE YOU? FUCK ARE YOU? FUCK ARE YOU?" He then shot the imp's corpse twice in the head. Bits of skull and the remaining brain matter inside flew out in all directions. Richard's bare, cold feet were warmed up by the blood and brain tissue now on them.

That was when he noticed the screaming outside. That was when he noticed the acrid smell of smoke filtering into the house. That was when he heard the gunfire and explosions. That was when he realized that this was not a contained event. He decided it would be safer to stay inside until the panic stopped rather than to run out into the chaos. It would be better for his sanity to stay inside and not witness the horrors that awaited him beyond his broken front door.

Outside he heard hydraulics… and the accompanying burring of a gatling gun. Outside, gunning down the panicking innocents on the streets, was another biomechanical nightmare… this one worse than the dog/bulls. In fact, it was worse than the imps and the floating demons. This was the most powerful creature to yet show its face on Earth. Richard began to whimper.


	5. Enter Frederick and Newman Gerber

**5: Enter Frederick and Newman Gerber**

"Two twos," Frederick stated nonchalantly as he placed two cards face-down over two other face-down cards that were presumably ones. The name of the game was Bullshit. The rules were that one player sets down however many ones they have in their hand. The next player then sets down the same number of how many twos they have in their hand. The next player sets down the same number of how many threes they have in their hand and so forth. However, if you have less than the required amount of a certain number, you have to bullshit the others. Meaning you have to set down another card in place of the missing card or cards. If a player is wise to your bluffing they say "Bullshit!" and display that either they made a mistake and must take all the cards in the deck or that the player lied and must take back the cards he/she had set down. If you catch a person lying, they have to take a shot of rum. If you try to catch a person lying and do not succeed, you must take a shot of rum. The goal is to get rid of all the cards in your hand first.

"Bullshit!" Veronica, that oh so voluptuous of teens, energetically stated as her long arm shot like a bullet to the top two cards and revealed Frederick's bluff. She held a two and King in her hand. "Drink up, bitch"

Frederick smiled and flashed her the bird before taking back his cards and pouring himself a shot of rum. He downed it and then clenched his teeth and eyes shut. The burning sensation passed just in time for him to shout "Bullshit" at Newman, who had just laid down two cards he was claiming were fives. Frederick grabbed the two cards and then groaned as he spotted Newman's mischievous smile. Sure enough there were two fives in on top of the deck of cards. "Mother fucker!" he shouted in a high voice. Then he glanced at the stairs leading up from the basement. He thought he had heard descending footsteps, but that was apparently in his mind as there was no one on the stairs.

"Shot numero dos and only five turns in," he let out a single, resounding "Haaaahhhh"

"You suck at this game," Robert threw in from beside Veronica, his hand no doubt massaging her thigh under the table.  
Frederick took the shot and then slammed the small glass down on the table. "Play me at Dice, you pure-D asshole," he joked.

"I'd smoke ya at that, too," Robert stated confidently.

"Actually..." Newman began. "He's the champ at that game. He's won four out of five games and I ain't fucking bluffing there"

"So you two just sit around all day playing Dice?" Robert asked.

"Yep," Frederick said.

"Okay, then. The Gerber babies don't do shit with their lives"

"One one," Veronica said. She then laid the card down.

"Bullshit," Frederick said and revealed his friend's bluff. There was a ten on the table. Frederick smiled and pushed the bottle of rum across the table to Veronica. "Drink up... bitch"

Veronica sighed and brushed her dirty-blonde hair back from her eyes. "Anyone got a chaser?" Chasers were any alcoholic beverage that had been mixed for the purpose of wiping away the taste and burn of a shot of rum.

Fred glanced to the side. He again could've sworn he had heard approaching footsteps. Again there was nothing there.  
"No chasers," Newman and Derrick, who had been dormant until that moment, replied simultaneously.

"You're shuffering mi lady," Robert said in an imitation of Sean Connery. Veronica threw a bad look at him and Robert let out a laugh. "I'm shorry mah dear. Will you ever foind it in yah big ol' hairt to ever forgive ush"

Veronica cracked a smile. "Oh, alright you fag. Shot glass?" Newman grabbed a clean one from the table behind him and slid it over to her. She filled it to the brim and took it all down. She then started groaning and stomping her feet constantly. She let out a big breath and started breathing heavily. "Goddamn! I said 'Goddamn"

Laughter erupted from everyone else at the table.

The laughter was cut off when half of Robert disappeared into the gaping maw of an invisible creature. A spray of blood that splashed over the monstrous shape made visible only by the blood clinging to its skin. Veronica began to shriek. The mutilated half-body of Robert sunk to the floor and the blood hanging in the air making out the shape of a very slightly gorilla-like face moved swiftly over to her and she also disappeared into thin air.

After that they were all running. Newman and Frederick went straight for the basement stairs and up into the kitchen. Derrick ran to the basement window and was climbing through it when the invisible creature pulled him back in and chowed down on his scrumptious organs. His screams died mere moments after Newman and Frederick had vacated the basement.  
Their parents had been gone for the night so they were alone in the house. "What the FUCK WAS THAT?" Newman screamed.

"No clue!" Frederick replied. "No clue! No clue! It ATE them! Jesus H. Christ it DEVOURED them"

"I know! I know! It was invisible! IT WAS INVISI-FUCKING-BLE!" It was dawn and the group had gotten together to drink and smoke pot. They had been driving around the full night beforehand smoking joint after joint in Newman's car. They had returned with sleep on their minds, but had decided to party some more before crashing out. This invisible creature had jolted the two surviving brothers to a state of full awareness despite them having been stoned and slightly buzzed off of alcohol.  
There were ascending, heavy footsteps on the stairs leading into the kitchen. Fred suddenly understood that he really had been hearing something that whole time they were playing the game.

"IT'S COMING!" Newman exclaimed and ran outside of the house. Fred followed after hearing the slapping of meaty feet on the floor of the kitchen. He didn't want to see the blood hanging in mid-air again.

Outside screams were raising into the early morning air. Fires raged up and down the street. Distant gunfire cracked.  
Three imps passed by their house chasing after a motorcyclist speeding head-long down the street. A flying skull tore a chunk out of one of their neighbors' faces and was hit by a car which subsequently crashed into a house and ran over two people in the process. A biomechanical dog/bull chased down a pre-teen on a bike and shredded them to ribbons. Five floating heads sprayed balled static electricity over the land, catching trees, bushes, and lawns on fire.

The two were cemented to their patio in fear and disbelief. Only when a red, floating, cycloptic balloon noticed them and fired its patented static electricity ball at them did they run. Newman dodged to the right and Fred to the left. The welcome mat burst into fire as did the invisible beast that had been moments from ripping both of them a new one simultaneously.  
The floating head gracefully flew down into the patio and stared at its accidental kill. Fred hoped it would be indecisive about which of them it would go after. The hope was futile as the head rotated to face Newman and took chase, shooting at him. Fred ran after Newman and the head with no idea of what he was gonna do when he caught up with them. His mind was just running random thoughts through and committing random actions. His rational mind had taken a momentary vacation.  
He ran through people's backyards and across streets. Most demons around were luckily too busy maiming and killing other innocents to give a damn about Fred or Newman.

A few streets south of their own Fred found Newman running back at him with a dazed look in his green eyes. "RUN! RUN!" Newman brushed past Fred and sprinted back in the direction from which they had come. Fred looked to see what all the commotion was about.

What he saw was the deflated body of the floating head engulfed in blood red flames. He wondered what was so frightening about that, then he saw what had killed it. He suddenly felt like a tiny insect waiting to be squished. It was an eight foot tall, red minatour with two devilish horns sprouting from the sides of its head. Its cloven feet scuffed the sidewalk as shuffled closer to look at its kill. It then let out a scream of victory that shook him to his very bones just before it shot two pure red fireballs from  
its wrists at the dead, burning body.

Then it spotted Fred.Fred ran. He ran faster than he had ever ran in his life, passing by his sprinting brother before long. His mind was in a state of pure panic. He was too worked up to even think about his three dead friends in the basement of his house. He was too horrified to grieve for them.

When he reached the house again he tore his brother's car's door open and jumped into the driver's side seat. He then snatched the ignition. Of course there were no keys and of course Fred could not ignite the car's engine. He screamed in frustration and dismay just before Newman piled into the passenger seat and shoved the keys violently into the ignition and started the car.

"DRIVE MOTHER FUCKER! DRIVE!" Fred threw the car into reverse and burned rubber getting out of the driveway. He then floored the car and they took off down the street going faster than they should've. They wound their way through the city and avoided accidents. A flying skull slammed into their rear bumper, but that caused almost no damage at all to the car.  
In this apocalyptic world, the two brothers disappeared from sight and waited for the initial attack to subside.


	6. Enter Chelsea Merrickson and Matt Lobin

**6: Enter Chelsea Merrickson and Matt Lobin**

"Is it mine?" Matthew asked her in a silent voice that shook with rage. His hand was white, clutching the back of a chair at the dining room table intensely. Chelsea feared he would chuck it at her. He had found out somehow. He had found out that she was cheating on him and had been doing so for a long time. However, she knew that wasn't what was bothering him; he had found something else out, too. She didn't want to accept that he had found that out.

"I-Is what yours?" Chelsea somehow kept her fear and knowledge of the answer concealed. Well, she thought she had anyway.

"You know." Chelsea swallowed saliva. Thank God her parents weren't here to see this. Thank God no one was here to see this.

"No I don't."

"Is it mine? IS THAT MY FUCKING CHILD?" his blue eyes were filled to the brim with rage when they met hers. He had never yelled at her before. She tried not to show her fear of him. Her weakness. Alas, her eyes betrayed her and began to water. She was two months pregnant and had managed to keep it a secret from both Matthew and Patrick. Well, thought she had anyway. Matthew took two large breaths and then resumed to speak in his calm-yet-royally-fucking-pissed-off manner. "Or is it his?" To be honest, Chelsea didn't know the answer to the question either. She had her suspicions, though. To voice them would possibly be suicide. She figured it best to fill him with the bullshit he wanted to hear.

"It's yours."

"Are you sure?" Matthew didn't sound quite so pissed anymore. She was glad, but she didn't want to flat-out lie to him. He would know. He wasn't abusive to her in any way, shape, or form. He was always kind to her. This drastic change in his persona was what was making her weak. She wasn't used to this. Chelsea didn't answer Matthew's question. So he repeated himself with a slightly raised voice.

"No," Chelsea replied silently, then cleared her throat. "No I'm not sure." Matthew looked down at the ground and sighed. His eyes were watering, too.

"Be sure," he stated simply. He then sighed again. "I-I'm sorry Chelsea. I'm really… I'm sorry. I don't know… my mind's just fucked up lately, you know? I want to be a dad. I really… I do want to be a dad." Chelsea thought it so odd that a teenager that had just attained their driver's license actually wanted a child. Of course, stranger things had happened and she doubted he was the only teen with that desire. The mood became less tense after that.

"I'm gonna g-go, alright?" Matt stated. "Do you want me to stay? I-I could stay if that… if that's what you want."

"No, you don't need to stay."

"Okay. I'll see you later, alright?" he then headed to the door. Chelsea asked her next question without thinking.

"Will you stay with me even if it isn't?" Matt stopped at the door to outside and remained silent for a few moments.

"I don't know. I'm gonna…" He then left the house under cover of night without finishing his sentence. He hopped into his miniscule Cavalier and drove away to some indeterminate destination.

Chelsea then sat down on the couch. The fake Matt had entered, but the real Matt had intervened between her and his false counterpart and taken off. Chelsea felt her stomach, which is where the slightest of bulges was beginning to grow.

* * *

The phone rang throughout Patrick Bateman's house. It was empty of all human life and had been for a full day. Once he had found the pregnancy test declaring Chelsea preg-o he had phoned Matt and filled him in on everything in a panic. After that he had bailed.

Patrick wasn't necessarily a coward; he had full intentions of sending a bit of child-support to the girl, but he didn't want to spend the next however long rotting in a jail cell while getting anally pumped by a big, black cellmate named Bubba. See, Pat was 22 years old and Chelsea was 16. That wouldn't really hold up well in a court of law. He felt bad about screwing her life up, but he wasn't about to have his own life screwed up for screwing hers up. Plus he didn't want the girl's parents to show their disapproval of his actions. He had met the two and they were good people that he hadn't wanted angry at him. Good job he had done keeping himself on their good side. He was gonna miss them.

Patrick was driving down route 666. He was a rather pious person, so he had been a bit unnerved at first about needing to travel down said route, but he had gotten through that. Most people thought it difficult to relate Patrick to any religion, let alone Christianity. He was a pothead, possessed of a drinking problem, and, yes, had sex out of wed-lock with underage women. Despite all of this he was in fact a Christian, and was certain that he would find himself in one of Hell's multiple layers upon death.

It was early in the morning; just after sunrise. Chelsea had been up all night trying to get into contact with Matthew, his parents, her friends, their parents, her parents, or anyone else for that matter. She had finally decided to try Patrick once again because she first off wanted to break it off, second wanted to know if he knew about her pregnancy, and third just wanted someone to talk to. The novelty of talking to herself had worn off not long after midnight.

Patrick was a long way from home and thus a long way from his desperately braying phone. He was daydreaming when he found himself staring at a car pile-up and slamming on the brakes of his car. He fell forward against his seatbelt and let out a startled cry of pain as the belt dug into his not-so-muscular chest.

Their were overturned police cars nearby, their lights flashing in endless, annoying urgency. There weren't a lot of cars in the pile-up, maybe three or four. The silence that descended after Patrick turned the radio off suggested there were no survivors. The blood on the ground far away from the accident and the grotesquely mutilated torso of a boy-in-blue suggested that it wasn't just the pile-up that had killed them either.

He rolled up his window fiercely and began to slowly, yet urgently, make his way around the pile-up. This was without much luck as it took up more than three-fifths of the road. So Pat took his old, beat-up Dodge off the road. He hoped to God that whoever had caused all of this wasn't aware of his existence. His thoughts went in a cycle, all promises to God that he would stop doing whatever if he were allowed to get out of there alive and in one piece.

Once the front of his vehicle got back onto the road three flying, flaming skulls smashed into his windshield at once, causing it to shatter. Two flew right into the back seat and hit the upholstery in the back, setting it aflame. The third one smacked him dead-center in the face and knocked him unconscious. His foot retained its pressure on the gas pedal for a moment before releasing and settling to the floor. The flying skull began to chew his face off as the flames sprouting out of its back set fire to the ceiling.

Five minutes later Patrick was dead and his car was completely ablaze. Then it blew apart, obliterating his body along with the  
three skulls that had remained in the car to make certain he was dead.

* * *

Matt sped his tiny Cavalier through the panicking streets of the city. The right side of his windshield was cracked in a spider-web pattern and his antennae was unaccounted for. The passenger door was dented so badly that it was permanently jammed and the car's trunk cover was folded upwards from the car being rear-ended. His head was bleeding and he was barely able to think clearly. His body was aching in so many places due to his constant hitting of the brakes and being hit by other cars.

A tall, brown creature standing in the middle of the road leapt out of the way of the car just in time to avoid becoming road kill. He was headed to Chelsea's house. It was mere meters down the chaos engulfed street. Smoke choked the sky as flames scorched it and scattered gunfire filled the air. A mini-van cut off the road abruptly and Matt slammed on the brakes just in time to avoid hitting it… hard. The spider-web crack grew and his air-bags were set off. Matt shot his hand out to grab the car's door handle and let himself out, gasping for breath. He feared his chest had collapsed in on itself after being shoved against the seat belt once again. After a moment he realized that he'd be dead if that had happened and stood up painfully.

He shut the car door and leaned against it, trying to force the pain into the back of his mind. The mini-van resumed backing out a couple moments later and sped down the street. Matt caught sight the a splotch of red on the cracked passenger window.  
Suddenly Chelsea was the last thing on Matt's mind as he realized he was marooned in the middle of a demon-infested street. There were dog/bulls and imps all over the place, but no floating demons. Matt was grateful for that. He was also grateful that the gatling-gun wielding, giant, biomechanical spider wasn't there either. That thing had been cutting through people like butter with its weaponry.

Police vehicles came careening down the street with sirens blaring. One had its front demolished as it hit a dog/bull. The two cops inside vacated the useless vehicle brandishing weapons. One had a pistol and the other had a shotgun. They began to pull the triggers without pause and with professional aim. An imp underwent a crude anatomy supervised by a shotgun shell fired at point-blank range. The dog/bull that had been hit was up and back in the game. The cop with the pistol sent three bullets into the region where its brain most likely was. That took it down, but distracted the cop long enough for an imp to hurl a fireball right into his face. He let out a bewildered shriek and then fell to the ground either close to death or dead, his face being eaten away at by the lingering flames.

The cop armed with the shotgun then took off. He threw the heavy shotgun away so that it wouldn't continue to slow him down and un-holstered his own pistol. With the demons distracted by the fleeing law enforcer, Matt limped across the street and grabbed the dead cop's pistol. He didn't know how to use a gun, but figured he would soon enough. He considered going for the shotgun, too, but one look at the demons not running after the cop threw such considerations straight out of his mind.  
He ran as fast as he could limp and reached Chelsea's house without further hindrance. Her parents' car wasn't in the driveway. Just in case Chelsea was still there, Matt broke the locked door down and entered. He coughed harshly for several moments before calling out for her.

There was no answer.

* * *

Chelsea didn't want to answer the voice from downstairs. All she wanted to do was sink into another world and exist with no memory and no future. Was that really so much to ask for?

Unfortunately for her the voice was insistent, shouting for her again and again in an increasingly frantic tone. She wanted it to go away. To fade away with the rest of the world. There was inarticulate screaming outside that wouldn't stop either. Creatures growling and screeching throughout the world in the growing darkness. The sun was setting, taking with it the lives of millions.

"Chelsea!" the voice screamed, almost screeched. "For the love of God answer me! Please!" Chelsea opened her eyes and looked at the inside of her closed closet doors. She knew this voice.

"Chelsea! Where the fuck are you?" She knew this voice. She knew the owner of this voice.

"Matt!" she screamed, standing up and shoving her closet doors open. Perhaps the world wasn't such a lost cause with familiar  
voices in it. With familiar people still living.

Moments later Chelsea was hugging Matt tight, sobbing harshly. Screams were carried on the wind to their ears from outside. Roars from creatures that could not possibly have been created by God. Gunfire from those lucky enough to own firearms. Matt rested his blood-encrusted hand on her brunette hair. He needed medical attention soon or he was going to die. He did not tell Chelsea about this.

The three of them waited in Chelsea's closet, Chelsea, Matt, and their unborn child, as society withered and died around them.


	7. Enter Billy Vogt

**7: Enter Billy Vogt**

Billy groaned harshly as he finally came to. It was late into the afternoon and he had been resting for the past however many hours on his deployed airbag. At first he didn't understand where he was, then he remembered.

He pushed the door of his blue Taurus open and collapsed onto the black, hot tar of the strangely empty highway. Usually the place would be buzzing by this time. So that meant this time fell under the category "unusual". He groaned again. He brushed back his greasy, brown hair and his hand came away wet and red. "Fuck," he muttered under his breath. He wiped the blood off on his blue jeans, leaving a big, maroon stain. Then he pulled the piece of glass causing the blood flow out of his head with a cry of pain. He had heard once that dark-eyed people had a higher threshold for pain than light-eyed people. He was quite grateful that he had brown eyes at that moment.

It had been about ten in the morning when he had been traveling down the highway. His destination was Wilmington City just three miles down a stretch of highway from his hometown. There he was going to visit his mother for the first time in three months; an inter-family feud had just ended and he wanted her to know that he had forgiven her for past sins.  
Unfortunately while on this trip he wound up slamming into an impossible eight-foot tall minotaur while traveling at sixty miles an hour. Had he not been wearing his seat belt he would have been killed. Had the minotaur been hit by the center of the car rather than the passenger side, he would be dead.

Billy looked mournfully at his wreckedand obviously totaledcar before looking around for the minotaur, trying to convince himself that it had just been his imagination. Alas such a comfort was forbidden to him. The dead, mangled body of the red minotaur laid thirty feet away from where his car had eventually come to a stop close to being off the road.

It hurt to move, so Billy ceased to do so and allowed himself to fall to the ground. He longed for unconsciousness to take hold once again. His mind began to race. Without realizing it he had drifted into a very shallow sleep filled to the brim with terrifying creatures and eternally raging flames.

The cellophane wrap of the dream was torn off as a big glob of bird shit splattered on his forehead. He sat up, frightened by the images he had just escaped, and screamed as his back cracked rather loudly. He had been enclosed by sleep for another two hours at least. Billy wiped the shit off with the sleeve of his white, fleece jacket. Then he took it off and shredded the unhygienic sleeve into strips. The strips that had no defecation on them he then wrapped around his wounds. This caused the transition of the white material to red. He groaned at the pain in his neck and back. He had been in multiple car accidents in his past so the pain was not new to him, but none of those accidents had been this severe and the pain had never been this long-lasting. He wished he had some sort of sanitary liquid to disinfect the wounds with.

He looked at the minotaur again and decided it was best not to ponder the creature's existence, but his mind betrayed him by doing so nonetheless. Was this creature an alien? Was it a creature that had not been seen since the long ago time of Greek mythology? Was it a demon?

The last question adhered to his mind more so than the other two. Billy had always considered himself agnostic. Since he believed that God's existence could not be fully disproved, he believed that Hell and the unholy creature entitled Satan that governed it could not be disproved either. He had always been paranoid about this, not wanting to take a rather long detour to Hell upon his expiration date. If this creature was indeed the spawn of Lucifer, Billy realized he'd seriously need to reconsider his religion. That is, if he didn't expire on this stretch of highway one way or another.

A gust of wind chilled Billy and caused goose bumps to form all up and down his now uncovered arms. He threw the fleece jacket back over himself and began to rub the sleeveless arm.

Slowly and painfully Billy got to his feet. He stared down the highway in the direction he had been headed. The nearest populated area was five miles off. However, to go back the way he had come would lead him to a rest station within two. There most likely wouldn't be people there, but there would be a payphone at least. From there he could call up the emergency operator and get an ambulance to come get him and transport him to the hospital where kindly Dr. So-and-So would evaluate and heal him. The back of his mind wondered what the world's response would be to the eight foot monstrosity he had hit. After that brief moment of contemplation Billy walked back the way he had come.

A mile down the road Billy saw a big sign proclaiming that drivers should look out for deer for the next three miles.


	8. Enter Helen Nerband

**8: Enter Helen Nerband**

Most of the demons had passed by already. Pretty much everyone was dead. Helen Nerband considered herself lucky to be the only survivor. The sole survivor of Hell on Earth. She had recently stolen a crashed-but-working semi-truck and driven to the gun store in downtown Bellesview, a town that was almost small enough to be considered a village. Now driving this monster of a truck was not an easy task. She had accumulated a license legalizing her usage of such a vehicle, but that had been twelve years ago. Since then she had not even been in such an automobile. She got rides from friends and cab-drivers, not bus-drivers. Multiple times she had nearly crashed into a deserted car due to either trouble with the brakes or trouble with steering efficiently.

There she had snatched a couple of hunting rifles, a 9mm pistol, a Colt Python (which the gunshop owner had recently gotten for a special order), and a shotgun. Luckily most of the glass cases had already been shattered, so she didn't have to shatter much glass in order to acquire the guns. She grabbed most of the ammo she saw, only having vague ideas of which type of bullet went with which type of gun. She didn't even know if she would be capable of making the guns worked. She hoped to God she wouldn't die because of a safety button. To remedy this problematic possibility, she snatched a gun owner's manual from the messy, blood-coated counter top.

She had thrown everything into the passenger seat, which subsequently created a cramped space that Helen was quite uncomfortable residing in. Before she drove away from Denko's Shop 'n Shoot she grabbed a box of shotgun shells and loaded them into the shotgun. She then inspected the shotgun further to be certain that there was nothing that would prevent the shell from putting a big ol' hole through a demon's stomach. Using the gun owner's manual she deemed the gun ready for action.

After that her captivating sea-green eyes then moved on to inspect the rest of her armory. The assortment of bullets was disorienting. She grabbed a box of one specific type and examined the size and weight of one of the bullets. She then flipped the Colt Python open and examined the sizes of the slots for the bullets. It didn't take a rocket scientist to realize that it wasn't a match. She then grabbed the 9mm and ejected the empty magazine after skimming through another chapter of the lengthy manual. She filled the magazine with the bullets after realizing that it was a match and placed it back into the gun. She skimmed some more and chambered a round.

Once she loaded the pistol she noticed that she was going to have some problems with it. She imagined herself running out of bullets in the middle of a battle between her and hordes of Hell. Her gun ran out of bullets and she ejected the magazine. Helen's vision of herself quickly tried to replace the bullets one by one, but was taken down and shredded to millions of narrow ribbons. Helen's real self filled with dread as though it was a destined event to happen.

She exited the cab of the semi-truck with the shotgun held at the ready and a pistol tucked into her pants. She hurried across the small strip of the desolated town between her and the shop. Such a terrible, depressing, lonely sight the once beautiful and uplifting town now was.

In the shop Helen quickly scanned the place again, searching now for a specific item. Items, actually. A collection of magazines for the pistol was necessary if she expected to survive a fight. Correction: a collection of loaded magazines for the pistol was necessary if she expected to survive a fight.

She smiled with glee upon discovering several. She grabbed ten of them, which was the maximum amount that could fit in her pockets, and then turned back to the front of the store. She hadn't considered the missing body of Denko, the gun shop owner, a mystery worth solving beforehand. Now she had solved it without even trying to. The five foot twelve inch, muscular frame of Denko stood in front of Helen with a smile on his rugged, aged face. He was sixty years old and his hair was mostly gone. Helen gasped and dropped the shotgun. She then calmed herself down and laughed at her own reaction.

"Jesus!" she laughed. "You scared the Hell out of me. I'm frigging great! I mean fucking great. Are you the owner?" Denko looked around the room with eyes that looked as though they were in a galaxy far, far away. The eyes finished their eccentric inspection and came to rest on her again. The eyes didn't look as though they could see her, but they were staring right at her. Helen took a few steps away and her joy disappeared. "Are you all right?" She began to notice more about Denko. Things she hadn't wanted to notice before. Blood soaked his attire was soaked so completely with fresh blood that it was dripping to the brown-carpeted floor. A bone was protruding from his left arm at the elbow. This was because that's where the arm ended in a fleshy stump. Denko was quite obviously not all right. Helen was shocked that he was still alive, let alone standing.

"Oh my God," she whimpered, incapable of saying anything else. "Oh my God." An evil smile then spread across Denko's face. He took a step toward her.

"Thief," he mouthed. Then he whispered in a truly horrifying voice that sounded as though it was straight out of Satan's vocal cords: "I do fucking hate 'em, I do. Thieving fuckin' bitch." Helen looked at her pockets full of stolen property, the shotgun on the floor, and the pistol in her pant-line.

"I'm sorry," she replied with a very weak voice. She felt like a kid in front of a candy shop manager after stealing a candy cane. She felt like she was six years old again. She had done something wrong and she was about to be punished. Her scars began to hurt again after years of being forgotten.

"Chastise them, I do." His one existing hand grabbed a shard of glass from a broken display case and he took three steps closer to her slowly retreating form.

"Don't, please. I'm sorry. I'm sorry." Suddenly they were mere inches apart. She looked down at Denko's dead face and he looked up at her tear-stained, slightly dark-skinned face. Helen didn't see Denko anymore; she saw her father. She was the child of a black woman and a white man. Her mother had been killed soon after Helen's birth. Clues led to her father, but nothing was substantial enough to convince a jury of twelve angry men. So Helen was left to be raised by her racist father. Helen's knees felt weak. Her scars were flaring with pain. The scars on her legs and the scars on her back. The scar on her stomach. The scar stretching from the bottom of her right eye to the top of her right ear. Portions of her face began to throb with pain where she had once dealt with lingering bruises and swellings.

"Punish them, I do." Helen worked the pistol out of her pants and pressed it to Denko's/her father's chest.

"Fuck you," she muttered and pulled the trigger. Coagulated blood sprayed out in all directions. Denko's eyes traveled back to this galaxy and confusion infected them. The dead thing before her looked down at the hole in its chest and then back up at her. It was still smiling. Now Satan was laughing through its mouth.

Helen readied herself to pull the trigger again, not yet comprehending the pure oddity and impossibility of what she was witnessing, but Denko walked away. Helen sighed, believing it to be over. It wasn't.

Denko grabbed a pistol from a display case and pointed it at her. Dulled panic flashed through her mind and she pulled the trigger again. Being untrained in the area of shooting, her bullet hit the wall far behind Denko's corpse. It then attempted to shoot her. It encountered one problem, however; the lock for the trigger had not been removed. That combined with the fact that the pistol was unloaded created quite the problem for the corpse seeing as it couldn't shoot its target, but its target could shoot it. He was at the same disadvantage as every deer or squirrel or what-have-you that spent the last second or two of its life blissfully unaware of the fact that it was lingering in front of the action-end of a boom stick.

It abandoned the gun without a second attempt to fire and disregarded the display case full of guns useless to it. Apparently zombies were more intelligent than the movies gave them credit for. Helen was relieved of much stress at giving this thing a title even if it was "zombie". Anything was better than a blank.

The zombie then grabbed its glass shard again and came back at her with an aggravated look on its face. "Good fir no-thing, thieves. I kill 'em, I do." Helen was no longer frightened of this zombie. The memory of her father began to retreat. It had only been awaken by her intense fear, anyway. "No you don't, father." Helen then raised her gun and pulled the trigger again. A nice, perfectly circular hole appeared on the left portion of Denko's forehead. Its two-hundred plus pound body hit the ground like a ton of bricks. Helen wiped the tears away from her cheeks and sighed, disappointed with herself.

She went out to the semi-truck and filled the magazines she had collected. She set them down on the floor and started the truck. Then she remembered she hadn't picked up the shotgun. Had she dropped the pistol instead she wouldn't have gone back, but the shotgun was a precious item and she couldn't afford to lose it.

Again she went into the gun shop. She summoned a large amount of strength from deep inside her and managed not to glance at the zombie's body on the floor. She picked up the heavy shotgun. She would need to make sure the fall hadn't damaged it in any way. Again she turned to leave and again she was distracted. The coagulated blood from the zombie was laying on the ground right next to a spot of fresher blood that had dripped off Denko's clothes. She stood there like a bump on a log for a moment before she heard shuffling behind a door marked EMPLOYEE'S ONLY shortly followed by a quiet, Satanic voice.  
"Fucking insubordinate students. I despise them. I have to murder them." Helen shook her head.

"Nope. Nope, nope. I'm leaving now. Fuck you very much." Moments after she began to drive away in the semi-truck she realized she had no recollection of what had happened between hearing that noise in behind the door and starting the semi-truck. She figured it was just as good forgotten.

She hit an imp, turning it into a mess that would require a mop for cleaning up, and smiled. Her scars didn't hurt anymore.


	9. The Encounter in the Woods

**The Encounter in the Woods**

"Jay!" Tony screamed. Most of the death that would take place already had. The city was in ruins. Red and blue flashing lights painted the scene of deserted buildings lining the debris-infested streets. Overturned or desolate emergency vehicles were the cause of these lights. SUVs, Chevrolets, Mitsubishis, etc. littered the area. Some were crashed into buildings while others were just smashed to bits.

Many dead bodies dotted the ground. Some were partially eaten. Males, females, children, elderly, all were at the party. Fuck even the infants had shown up. No demons were in sight. No Two-Heads (Tony's name for the two-headed demon with burnt skin), Brownies (his name for the tall, fire-ball chucking demons), or Bulls (his name for the pink, gorilla-like nightmares that snarled like pigs). No Flying Skulls and no Brains. Not a demon was stirring. Thank God.

"Jay!" Tony screamed again, searching for the brother that had limped away from him what seemed like three billion millenniums ago. No answer came that was not the silent yet loud howl and moan of the wind. No answer save for the crackling of flames. No answer save for static crackling through one or more of the emergency vehicles.

"JAY!" Tony tried again. He had been doing this for nearly twenty minutes, walking from desolate area to desolate area screaming his brother's name, feebly hoping against hope that there would come an answer. Finally, however, he stopped. There would never be an answer. Never again. Never more.

Tony opened an Oldsmobile station wagon's door and looked inside. One door was missing in the back and the upholstery was torn to ribbons, appearing to be covered in snow with the white innards pulled out in several places. The windshield was spider-webbed on the passenger side and a lot of blood (human?) covered the windshield on the driver side. The steering wheel and dashboard were coated in coagulated blood. Two fingers, still connected by a small bit of hand, were wrapped around the handle of the glove box, which was hanging open. He wondered where the bodies were and if there were survivors.

He forced those thoughts into the back of his mind. The only thing that mattered right now was whether there were keys in the ignition or not. He checked. There were. He didn't feel like a million bucks. He didn't feel like the luckiest man alive. He felt nothing. Dully noting that he had just gained an advantage in the back of his mind, he turned the ignition on.  
There were no tears and there was no smile. He felt nothing for his more than likely dead brother. No remorse or pity… or envy.

The engine became alive and Tony slightly depressed the gas pedal. The tires began to roll slowly across the tar, cracking small bits of glass and crushing dead bodies beneath them. The ride was bumpy and Tony became annoyed with it very quickly. But he didn't eject himself from the vehicle and he didn't stop driving.

Soon the road was clear for the most part and he could pick up the speed. The buildings were lower and spaced further apart here. The business buildings became apartment buildings and the apartment buildings became houses. He was two streets away from the one he used to live on. The one he lived on yesterday.

He reduced his speed and began to cry… again. His eyes scanned the world through his tears, searching for his brother. Images of the Brain returned to his mind and he decided it would be best if he didn't linger. It was probably around still. Perhaps still hunting for him.

There were Mechanical Bulls, Brownies, and Two-Heads scattered around, playing with the carcasses of the dead. Tearing them apart piece by piece as if they were morphed clones of Ed Gein and wanted to decorate whatever passed for their residences with the deceased. A few threw glances at him, but none really cared for him now that they had dead bodies to toy around with apparently. Perhaps these creatures didn't give a shit about the killing, just the results of killing.

Tony kept driving for minutes that stretched on and on and on… becoming miniature eternities that got off on his boredom and misery. Each second seeming five times longer than the road laid before him.

A few Flying Skulls were gently hovering across the road, the fire causing the air just above them to twist and twirl like a computer effect. Tony drove beneath them and they didn't throw him a second glance. He didn't understand it in the least. Vaguely he realized he had stopped crying and that he could see clearly again. Just as ambiguously he realized that he had just defecated into the seat of his pants.

He turned off the road and into a parking lot for a Wal-Mart. He pulled up to the doors and killed the engine. As silently as he could manage with feces squishing about in his pants he snuck through the broken doors and entered the nearly pitch-black supermarket. It seemed almost cavernous.

Fear caused him to go back outside and into his new car. He turned the ignition on and drove out of the parking lot. No fucking way was he going to travel through a huge space that he couldn't see in. It was probably full of dead bodies and ghosts anyway. If demons were walking the Earth… fuck, why not ghosts? Why not aliens from OUTTER SPACCCCEEEE? Why not Area 51? Why not dimensional portals in the fucking Bermuda Triangle? And, furthermore, why not vampires, werewolves, leprechauns, living dolls with malicious intent, or gnomes?

Tony began to chuckle to himself as things began to run through his mind. Perhaps he could pay Frodo Baggins or Samwise Gamgee a visit while he went on his merry way to the Chocolate Factory. This made him flat-out laugh. The laughter was loud and joyous if a bit insane. It ended when he hit the desolate cadaver of a small car and sent it off the road.

His head connected with the air bag, which sent it right back into the head rest. He hadn't been wearing his seat belt, something that he was, at the moment, happy for. No chest pains. Just head and neck pains. Luckily he had only been going twenty instead of thirty or forty.

The car was still going, though, his foot still depressing the gas pedal. He couldn't see where he was going or hold the steering wheel. For a moment he contemplated just letting it go until he was dead. Just speeding blindly down the street until he collided with a tree, demon, car, body of water, or all of the above and joined the millions already dead. When the vehicle began to rumble upon going off road he panicked and quickly abandoned this plan. He let the gas pedal relax and slammed down on the brakes. The car came to a stop and Tony sat there, resting on the airbag. His head was swimming and he felt like he was going to throw up.

He fumbled for the door handle and forced the door open. The vomit came forth like the Niagara Falls, spraying against part of the door and dripping down to the field, which now had tire tracks where there used to be grass. Tony stopped puking and rested back against the airbag, his nose wrinkled at the sour smell and his teeth gritted at the sour aftertaste. It was all fucked up. Every bit of it.

Tony cried yet again. This time it was loud, unrestrained, and for no real reason. For several minutes that flew by like seconds he bawled, tears streaming and sobs echoing. It came to a subtle stop. Like an experienced winter driver coasting along the side of a snowy road before fully ceasing to move. Then he did nothing but rest with his eyes closed. It felt so good.

He finally fell asleep.

* * *

Several hours later the sun was down and he was awake. At first he didn't know where he was, wondering why his pillow felt so strange. Wondering why his bed was angled to allow him to sit. Wondering why his room was so small and only seats. Wondering why he could hear crickets chirping and gunshots in the far distance.

Then it all came back and, without thinking, he punched the part of the door he could reach. He hissed in pain and grabbed at his bleeding knuckle. The meat of his fist had been sliced apart by the hinge of the door. He sucked it for several moments and then pressed it hard against his jeans. The blood wasn't coming forth_ too_ badly. It did hurt like hell, though.

"For fuck's sake!" he groaned, wallowing in his misery. His voice cracking. "Why does this kind of shit always happen to me? Why am I such a fucking piece shit? Why… Why the fuck? Why the fuck? WHY THE FUCK?" Tony sucked on his fist again and was surprised at the warmth of his blood. It tasted kind of good.

Adrenaline began to surge through his system and he rolled out of the car, falling to the ground. His legs refused to get under him. He moaned and lifted his hand out of the puddle of vomit he had created before he had slept. The legs of his jeans became damp as the wetness of the vomit puddle soaked all around them. Adrenaline was still speeding through him, but he couldn't get his legs to get under him and he couldn't get himself to force them to. Thinking about everything that had happened was making it all worse… giving him more energy that he wouldn't use.

He felt like sleeping again. Strange, he had slept for so long he should be up and at 'em… but he wanted sleep even more. The moon and the stars shined down upon him and they seemed too bright. He closed his eyes and began to drift in and out of consciousness for a while. Nothing happened around him. The gunfire became silent and all that could be heard was Tony's breathing and the chirping crickets. Bats flapped their wings in the sky, mere silhouettes in front of the moon and the stars.  
Finally Tony pulled himself up off the ground. His legs were wobbly and cold, the vomit-induced dampness cooled by the night wind uncomfortably. He began to walk away from the stolen car and back to the street. It would take such a long time to walk anywhere in that direction. So the sooner he started the better. Hungry, thirsty, and weak, Tony began to walk down the long  
road, leaving behind him food, water, and other survivors.

* * *

An hour or so later Tony sat down in the middle of the road that was no enclosed on both sides by large, thick collections of trees and bushes. He didn't think he'd be able to get much further due to famine and drought. He'd need to look for a river or something close by to drink from. Drinking the toilet water of the fish and amphibians wasn't a very attractive necessity, but it was better than death. Unfortunately it'd be hard to find something in the woods when darkness obscured it all.

He decided to begin his search after a session of sleep. The hardness of the road was so comfortable.

Sleep was denied him, however. He could hear the heavy footsteps of something very close by. Something lingering behind the trees, just out of sight.

Tony opened his eyes and sat up quickly. The trees reached up into the sky like towers and wind blew their leaves and branches about. Tony began to think of ghosts.

Footsteps trailed just beyond his vision, their cause veiled by long shadows. Tony stood up and began to walk away from the thumping of the footsteps. He melded into the shadows on the opposite side of the road. Everything seemed different. The trees surrounding him were suspects of concealing ungodly creatures. The whisper of leaves and the groaning of branches above became voices from another world. Voices from the dead.

He sank deeper into the ocean of salt water shadows. He could hear something following him as he swam as silently as he could to the ocean floor. Leaves crinkling and twigs snapping. Everything was conspiring against him.

Tony slipped through the spaces between trees elegantly while the creature behind him forced them further apart and knocked them over. He wondered if it was pursuing him or if it was just coincidentally going in the same direction as he was. It sure as hell was making a lot of noise for a hunter in action.

For several minutes Tony kept several yards ahead of the large creature following him without breaking out into a panic. His mind was showing him all sorts of things. Images that horrified him. His instincts kept urging him to run. To take off like a bullet and leave the monstrosity somewhere far behind him. The rumbling of his through-and-through empty stomach seemed as loud as a tank rolling through the woods. His throat was so dry it hurt to swallow the small amounts of saliva that he managed to collect in his mouth.

Then Tony stumbled and fell into a small pond. At first he thought the creature had somehow caught up with him and that his insignificant life was about to come to an end. Then he realized he had just fallen into a body of water. He panicked at first and thought of demons awaiting him at the bottom, creatures that could hold their breath for a long, long time as they waited. Creatures that only existed to end his existence.

He propelled himself to the top of the shallow pond and took in several deep, loud breaths of air. Then he began to drink the water without even thinking. Its rancid taste was more delicious than anything he had ever ingested before in his life.

Unfortunately the bliss invoked by the much welcome water was soon obliterated by a feeling of extreme cold and fear. The footsteps were falling very quickly… and coming in his direction.

Tony drew in a quick gasp of air and went down to the bottom of the pond. To keep his head from breaching the surface he had to keep his knees bent and his arms constantly pushing upwards to keep his buoyancy from lifting him up. He couldn't see anything at all but black and the occasional reflection of moonlight from slight ripples at the water's surface.

Then he heard something splash into the water. He was knocked to the side by the onrush of suddenly displaced water. The thing that was following him was now walking towards him in the water and _he couldn't see it_.

Frantically he began to swim to the other side of the pond and pulled himself out of the water. He swung his damp body around. Now he could see the outline of something gigantic coming towards him. Something that was at least four times his size with legs as thick as tree trunks and only knee-deep in the water that he could become fully submerged in. Its man-sized arms were swinging slightly at its sides as it walked.

Then it stopped while Tony was struggling to his feet, the extra weight of his wet clothes making it difficult for his weakened state. One of its three-clawed hands suddenly became alight with orange flame. Tony got his feet under him and began to run away, greatly hunched over. He got five steps when a fireball the size of his head flew just inches above his head and hit the tree in front of him. The moisture of his eyes evaporated in the resulting conflagration and he began to blink rapidly and doubled over, screaming and rubbing his temporarily useless eyes.

Unlike the fireballs of the Brownies, this blaze did not die out. It spread up and down the tree. The dramatic sight was unseen by the only human close enough to witness it and unappreciated by the hulking demon that had caused it. Tony scrambled blindly for cover as he demon continued its trudge through the pond and onto the land. It understood that it had weakened its prey and now wanted to play with it. The fire spread to three more trees and the night became like day.

Tony began to regain his vision. He paused to look back at his pursuer and saw a blurrily detailed image. Thick, grayish skin was tightly stretched over gigantic muscles. Something red was above the creature's open mouth and he thought he could see saliva dripping outwards. It roared at him something that sounded like a deep-voiced cat yowling.

Tony looked away and continued his almost blind scrambling. He began to dodge trees as he sprinted through the forest, branches scratching his face and arms. Blood from the wounds decreased in thickness as it mixed with the water dripping off his body. He was very cold and the wind from the run was making it worse. God he wanted his own personal sun. That and food. Food would've really hit the spot for him.

His vision continued to clear and he began to dodge the branches that had been scratching him as he ran. The world became a  
blur again as all rational thought was pushed out in favor of instinct. Things ceased to make sense, but that didn't matter because they didn't need to make sense. He needed a drink of water again.The rigid, numb excuses for his legs thumped uncomfortably against the ground and he feared that at any moment in time one of his knees would bend the wrong way and he would cease to run.

The creature was somewhere close behind him, running to keep him from getting away. The light of the fire was traveling not too far behind it, spraying black smoke into the sky that was masked by the blackness of the sky.

Tony emerged from the surface of the ocean of salt water shadows and darted across the road beyond. A speeding car  
honked its horn and the driver spun his wheel to avoid hitting Tony. Instead it slammed into the tree trunk legs of his pursuer. The driver was instantly killed, his blood sprayed against the windshield and his children in the back as the car's front folded inwards. Tony could hear shrill shrieking. The monster toppled over with a broken leg and crushed the car flat, killing the kids in the back and itself as shards of metal drove themselves up between its ribs and into its organs. The shrieking discontinued. The gas tank was not ruptured in a major way and an explosion did not ensue.Tony's head was spinning as he came to an abrupt stop by hitting the ground and skidding along it. He looked behind him and saw the spreading light of fire illuminate the dead, twenty foot body of a creature that had no right in any way, shape, or form to exist. It'd didn't surpass the Brain in deadliness or eccentricity, but it was just so _large_.Without another second's delay Tony's head fell to the ground and he descended into the welcome tranquility of the world of dreams.


End file.
